A study conducted by a child rights NGO concluded that Public Schools are facing a Severe shortage of teachers, which is making quality education impossible to reach for the children. There is a shortage of more than five lakh teachers in elementary schools and 14 percent of government secondary schools do not have a prescribed minimum of six teachers, the report says.
The study by The Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA) and Child Rights and You (CRY) found that Bihar and Uttar Pradesh together constitutes for more than 4.2 lakhs of vacant posts. Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu faced no such problems as they have recruitments available for over 95 percent of vacant posts at the elementary level.
The Elementary and Secondary level schools in Bihar consists of the most underqualified or untrained teachers. According to the report Bihar has 38.7 percent of unqualified teachers practicing at the elementary level and 35.1 percent at the secondary level. While on the other hand, West Bengal is facing a shortfall of 31.4 percent at the elementary level and 23.9 at the secondary level.
The study stressed that the major problems faced by the schools are poor infrastructure and unqualified teachers.
According to the 14th Finance Commission, the states have increased the funding for school education, still, there lies shortage of qualified teachers, which shows that the budget is being underutilized with an inappropriate allocation of resources among the schools.
Due to the scarcity of qualified teachers, the schools are forced to recruit underqualified or unqualified teachers. The study was drafted on the basis of school education budgets for six states, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, and Tamil Nadu.